Ty's friend and fellow designer Michael Moloney takes us on a tour of his Palm Springs home

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Interior design guru Michael Moloney performs dramatic transformations of families' homes every week on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition along with Ty and others, but in this case, he brought his work home. When he first looked at this 1958 modern architectural classic in Palm Springs, California, "it was a disaster," says Michael. "It had a chocolate-brown exterior with turquoise trim, lavender walls, pink toilets, and someone had heavily lacquered the stone fireplace," encasing its beautiful natural texture in yellowing sealer. "It could not have been any uglier. But after looking at 24 homes in two days, I knew this was the house I wanted," says Michael. "It just needed some work."

"I've been going to the desert since I was a kid," he says. "There's something magical about it—almost spiritual. Palm Springs is just a two-hour drive from Los Angeles, and by the time you're through the first hour, all your troubles are behind you."

Right after he bought the house, seven years ago, Michael had everything painted white with inexpensive paint, "just so I could see what I was working with," he says. He kept the existing footprint, but ripped out everything except the walls and the fireplace. He removed the exterior wood siding and had the house skim-coated in smooth plaster. He replaced old, water-damaged glass windows and sliding doors with low-e dual-paned glass for greater energy efficiency, and opened up the back of the house, overlooking the pool, with additional floor-to-ceiling windows.

"I had the contractor try sandblasting the rock wall and fireplace to see what would happen," says Michael. "It not only removed the lacquer and paint, it restored their natural beauty and gave them a smoothness." Polymer concrete floors were poured throughout the house (except in the bath), with nickel inlay seams—"like a bank," he says, jokingly. They feel smooth and cool underfoot, clean up easily, and dripping swimsuits from the pool are "no big deal."

Michael furnished the house almost entirely in white and clear materials—Lucite, glass, marble, leather—creating an airy, cool oasis befitting the sun-bleached desert. "White works when it's on purpose," he says. The rock wall and fireplace inspired the natural textures Michael sprinkled throughout, including a pebble wall in the dining room, which brings depth and tactile richness to the simple palette. The furnishings embody his trademark mix that he has perfected at his L.A. store, Maison Luxe: high and low, new and old, glamour with whimsy. For example, he found a Louis XV– style antique settee in Paris and painted its gilded frame white, then playfully paired it with Philippe Starck's "Louis Ghost" polycarbonate chairs and a mid-century Lucite-base dining table.

Outside, he told the landscapers to "take out everything that isn't a palm," and then he replaced the scraggly backyard with a glamorous marbleedged pool. "It's a great house for entertaining," says Michael, who is always hosting dinners for friends. "I walk into this house and I giggle," he says. "I feel lucky to have gotten this house and to do my own thing with it. It's always a treat to be here."